Elisabeth von der Esch
HS Hydrological Sciences
The 2019 Outstanding Student Poster and PICO (OSPP) Award is awarded to Elisabeth von der Esch for the poster/PICO entitled:
Raman microspectroscopy as a tool for microplastic particle analysis (von der Esch, E.; Anger, P. M.; Baumann, T.; Niessner, R.; Elsner, M.; Ivleva, N. P.)
Click here to download the poster/PICO file.
Elisabeth von der Esch is a PhD student in analytical chemistry at the Institute of Hydrochemistry, Technical University of Munich, Germany. The aim of her study is to automate and improve the statistically significant analysis of microplastic in environmental and food samples, for the Project MiPAq.
The poster presented at EGU 2019 shows a state-of-the-art Raman microspectroscopy approach for the analysis of microplastic. It consists of five steps:
- Deposition and image capture of particles on a filter.
- Localization and morphological characterization of all particles via TUM-ParticleTyper
- Calculation of a statistically meaningful subsample for chemical analysis
- Chemical identification via Raman microspectroscopy analysis
- Evaluation of the Results
Currently together with her team of students, coworkers and advisors she is working on reference materials that mimic the properties of microplastic found in the environment to accurately test and improve current analytical methods. Furthermore, the development of the software TUM-ParticleTyper is in its final stages and will enable the localization and morphological characterization of particles in light, fluorescence and scanning electron microscopy images.